14 DAY TRIAL // Wavii, the news aggregator app that was bought by Google, has announced that it is closing down.
After news of the deal between the two companies, the question about the fate of the app has been raised.
“While we won’t continue to offer our particular service, we’ll be using our natural language research at Google in ways that may be useful to millions of people around the world,” CEL Adrian Aoun wrote in a post that replaced the old Wavii home page.
He then goes and thanks all Wavii users for their feedback and involvement throughout their journey.
Given the app’s theme, Wavii has been compared to Summly, the news condenser that Yahoo acquired recently.
Up until now, the startup has managed to raise $2 million in seed funding and has a large staff, which led to the necessity to either raise more money or try to get someone to buy the company.
The startup is said to have been in talks with both Apple and Google, but the latter finally won and signed the deal. The rumored price tag is of $30 million (€23 million).
While Apple wanted to use Wavii for its Siri division, Google plans to use the semantic search for its various features, such as Google Knowledge, since it could help contextualize the information Google currently shows on the sidebar of most searches.
However, their knowledge in this field could be used for even more features, such as Google News, and even for the brand new high-tech Google Glass that the company is planning to launch next year.
Since the beginning of 2013, Google has bought several businesses. In February, the company closed the deal with Channel Intelligence, an ecommerce business.
Then, in March, Google acquired DNNresearch Inc. and Web Application Server Talaria.